Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  The signal for “Action” sounded on Lion at seven o’clock. “The fine sunrise and clear sky gave promise,” Chatfield wrote. But matters quickly went amiss. At 7:25 a.m., when Warrender received Shark’s signal about Roon, he assumed that Beatty had also received Shark’s message and that the British battle cruisers were steaming toward the position the destroyer had given. Not until 7:36 a.m. did Warrender suspect that something was wrong and signal Beatty, “Have you received message from Lynx?” Lion had not; nor did she receive this signal from King George V. Subsequently, when Beatty wheeled his battle cruisers into their screening position, thereby turning them directly away from Shark and Roon, Warrender knew that something was terribly wrong. At 7:55 a.m., he urgently signaled Beatty, “Are you going after Roon?”

  Beatty was surprised. “Have heard nothing of Roon,” he replied. Warrender immediately forwarded the signals he had received. Just as Lion was reading these, New Zealand, after thirty minutes’ delay, finally also relayed Lynx’s signals. Beatty acted quickly to intercept Roon. He reversed course and dispatched New Zealand, formerly at the rear of his formation and now closest to the position given by Shark, to head for that point at 24 knots. To make it less likely that Roon would escape, Beatty spread Goodenough’s light cruisers two miles apart, ahead of the other three battle cruisers now following New Zealand at 22 knots.

  This chase of Roon was continuing and New Zealand, followed by the rest of the British battle cruisers, was slowly closing the gap when a new series of signals began to arrive in Lion’s wireless room. At 8:42 a.m., Lion intercepted a signal from the light cruiser Patrol, leader of the Hartlepool flotilla. Patrol, 150 miles from Lion, was telling the Tyne guard ship Jupiter that she was engaging two enemy battle cruisers. No position was given, but everyone knew that Patrol belonged to the 9th Destroyer Flotilla, patrolling inshore off the Yorkshire coast. For a few minutes, Beatty hesitated. Seriously troubling as the message was, he hated having to abandon the pursuit of Roon. The message was only an intercept; meanwhile, New Zealand was almost within gun range of a significant enemy ship. Ten minutes later, the issue was resolved by a second intercept, this one a message from the Admiralty to Jellicoe at Scapa Flow: “Scarborough being shelled.” At nine o’clock, Beatty made his decision. Pursuit of Roon was abandoned, New Zealand was ordered to rejoin the battle cruiser squadron, and Beatty turned all of his ships directly toward Scarborough.

  Warrender had intercepted the same messages and, even before Beatty reversed the battle cruisers, he had turned his battleships to the west. Believing Patrol to be farther south than she actually was, Warrender had first set his course for the Humber. “Scarborough being shelled,” he signaled Beatty. “I am proceeding to Hull.” “Are you?” Beatty replied, in effect. “I am going to Scarborough.” A few minutes later, Warrender reached the conclusion that Beatty was right and also decided to steer for Scarborough. By 9:35 a.m., the British forces were steaming in two main groups: Beatty’s four battle cruisers with Goodenough’s four light cruisers were ten miles ahead and to the northwest of Warrender’s six battleships and Pakenham’s four armored cruisers. All were steering west to cut Hipper’s line of retreat from the English coast.

  The morning of December 16 found Winston Churchill, who had slept at the Admiralty, awaiting news. “I was in my bath when the door opened and an officer came hurrying in from the War Room with a naval signal which I grasped with dripping hand: ‘German battle cruisers bombarding Hartlepool.’ I jumped out of the bath. . . . Pulling on clothes over a damp body, I ran downstairs to the War Room. The First Sea Lord [Fisher] had just arrived from his house next door. Oliver, who invariably slept in the War Room and hardly ever left it by day, was marking the positions on the map. Telegrams from all the naval stations on the coast affected by the attack and intercepts from our ships in the vicinity speaking to each other, came pouring in, two or three to the minute.”

  From the perspective of naval strategy, this was news for which the Admiralty War Group had hoped: the Germans had fallen into a British trap. “The bombardment of open towns was still new to us at that time,” Churchill continued.

  But, after all, what did that matter now? The war map showed the German battle cruisers within gunshot of the Yorkshire coast while a hundred and fifty miles to the eastward, between them and Germany, cutting mathematically their line of retreat, steamed in the exact positions intended, four British battle cruisers, and six of the most powerful battleships in the world. Attended and preceded by their cruiser squadrons and flotillas, this fleet of our newest and fastest ships, all armed with the heaviest guns then afloat, could in fair weather cover and watch effectively a front of nearly a hundred miles. In the positions in which dawn revealed the antagonists, only one thing could enable the Germans to escape annihilation at the hands of an overwhelmingly superior force. And while the great shells crashed into the little houses of Hartlepool and Scarborough, carrying their cruel message of pain and destruction to unsuspecting English homes, only one anxiety dominated the thoughts of the Admiralty War Room. The word “Visibility” assumed a sinister significance. At present it was quite good enough. Both Warrender and Beatty had horizons of nearly ten miles. There was nothing untoward in the weather indications. At 9 a.m. the German bombardment ceased and their ships were soon out of sight of land, no doubt on their homeward voyage. We went on tenter-hooks to breakfast. To have this tremendous prize—the German battle cruiser squadron whose loss would fatally mutilate the whole German Navy and could never be repaired—actually within our claws and to have the event all turn upon a veil of mist, was a racking ordeal.

  The day before, Churchill and his Admiralty colleagues had overruled Jellicoe’s request to involve the entire Grand Fleet in the trap being laid for Hipper. Now, suddenly, they decided that Warrender and Beatty must be reinforced. Jellicoe, who already had the Grand Fleet with steam up at Scapa Flow, was ordered to take his ships to sea. Bradford with the 3rd Battle Squadron (the eight predreadnought King Edwards) at Rosyth was told to join Warrender. (Jellicoe, as Commander-in-Chief, modified this Admiralty disposition. He wanted to concentrate the full power of the Grand Fleet; accordingly, he instructed Bradford not to join Warrender but to rendezvous with the Grand Fleet.) Tyrwhitt, still tethered off Yarmouth with his four light cruisers and two destroyer flotillas by Admiralty orders, was released to join Warrender. Tyrwhitt eagerly attempted to obey, but leading his ships out from the shoals off Yarmouth into the open sea, he soon found that his destroyers, plunging into heavy waves and gale winds, were suffering badly and he ordered them back to Yarmouth. Proceeding with his four light cruisers alone, Tyrwhitt ordered a speed of 25 knots; he found that in these seas, the ships could make barely 15. Commodore Keyes was told to move his submarines from their station off Terschelling into the Bight and to try to catch enemy ships returning to port.

  The sea floor of the southwest shoal of the Dogger Bank was dangerously shallow for dreadnoughts, British or German. Although the bottom of the sea lay under at least forty-two feet of water, it was strewn with the wrecks of sunken ships, whose rusting masts and superstructures sometimes rose up near the surface. To avoid these submerged navigational hazards, the British squadrons steaming west to intercept Hipper divided. Beatty led his battle cruisers north of the patch; Warrender took his battleships and armored cruisers to the south. By eleven o’clock, Beatty was clear of the patch and had altered course northwest for Scarborough. But now a new obstacle loomed. Two large minefields, each thirty to forty miles long and extending ten miles out to sea, had been laid by the Germans off the Yorkshire coast earlier in the autumn. The British had located the fields and, considering them useful as a protection against raiding, had thickened and improved them by laying additional mines. Between these two minefields there was a north-south gap of clear water fifteen to twenty miles wide, which Hipper had used to approach the coast. Now, Warrender, anxious to find Hipper at any cost, signaled Beatty, “Light cruisers must go in through minefield to lo
cate enemy.” Simultaneously, Warrender asked the Admiralty for permission to take his battleships through the same mined waters.

  At this point, Jellicoe, monitoring all messages to and from the Admiralty, intervened. The Commander-in-Chief was acutely aware of the location of the minefields and he believed that Hipper, attempting to escape, would steer due east through the same gap he had used coming in. At 10:04 a.m., Jellicoe signaled Warrender and Beatty the exact location of the Scarborough-Whitby gap, saying, “Enemy will in all probability come out there.” At 10:55, the Admiralty replied to Warrender’s question about taking his ships over the minefields: “Enemy is probably returning towards Heligoland. You should keep outside minefield and steer so as to cut him off.” The British were almost in position to do this: Warrender’s battleships and armored cruisers were headed for the southern end of the gap; Beatty, ten miles to the north, was headed directly for the northern end of the gap with his light cruisers spread out like a fan ahead of his battle cruisers; Trywhitt was moving up from Yarmouth to join Warrender. The trap was closing. “At eleven o’clock,” Churchill wrote, “the four German battle cruisers, with their light cruisers returning independently sixty miles ahead of them, were steaming due east for Heligoland at their highest speed. At the same time all our four squadrons were steaming due west in a broad sweep directly towards them. The distance between the fleets was about a hundred miles and they were approaching each other at an aggregate speed of over forty miles an hour.”

  Then the weather intervened. The promise of early dawn—clear weather, good visibility, and calm sea—had been realized during most of the morning. Now, a little after eleven o’clock, with the opposing battle cruiser squadrons only a hundred miles apart and steaming directly toward each other, the weather suddenly changed. As late as 11:05 a.m., when the crew of Southampton was sent below to dinner, they left the deck in brilliant sunshine. Fifteen minutes later, called back to action stations, they found themselves coming up into rain and high wind. The wind blowing from the northwest was pushing the early-morning storm—the same storm that had bedeviled Hipper’s small ships near the English coast—out into the middle of the North Sea. Rain squalls and heavy mists scudded over the water. Visibility plummeted, first to five miles, then to two, sometimes to one. Beatty, heading into the wind, was obliged to reduce speed to 18 knots. Within the next half hour, thick mists and driving rains from the northwest whipped the sea into white foam and sometimes blotted out the light cruisers in the screen ahead of Beatty’s battle cruisers. Then, at 11:25 a.m., Southampton, the wing ship on the southern edge of the light cruiser screen, sighted an enemy—then many enemies—three miles ahead and steaming straight toward her. They were Stralsund and eight destroyers, some of the ships that Hipper had sent back because of heavy seas off the English coast.

  Goodenough, commanding Beatty’s light cruisers from Southampton, flashed recognition signals. The unidentified ships failed to reply and he prepared to engage. By this time, spray blowing off the turbulent seas was drenching Southampton’s bridge, where Goodenough stood. Under such conditions, it was practically impossible to fight an enemy to windward; the gun crews would be blinded. Nevertheless, Goodenough signaled Beatty, “Engaged with enemy cruisers.” Stralsund returned Southampton’s fire, then turned away to the south; in the mist and heavy seas, neither cruiser scored hits. Meanwhile, even as Birmingham, Nottingham, and Falmouth were turning to support him, Goodenough perceived two additional German light cruisers, Strassburg and Graudenz, and more destroyers coming up. Wholly involved in what was happening on his spray-swept bridge, Commodore Goodenough failed to report these additions to Beatty, and that failure led to a sequence of other damaging British mistakes.

  Beatty, on the bridge of Lion a few miles to the northwest, was aware that Southampton was in action; he had seen the flashes of gunfire lighting up the North Sea murk and heard the deep notes of the cannonade carried on the wind. Confirmation came with Goodenough’s signal: “Engaged with enemy cruisers.” Beatty was willing to have Southampton engaged and also willing that Birmingham leave his screen to join Southampton. But he worried that with this departure of two of the four light cruisers of his screen, his four battle cruisers would become exposed and vulnerable. Beatty’s preoccupation throughout the day was to locate and destroy the German battle cruisers. Up to that moment, he had received no report of their whereabouts other than Patrol’s signal from Hartlepool that she was in action with two of them. Reports from the Admiralty had stated only that “dreadnoughts” were bombarding Scarborough. Eventually, these German battle cruisers had to return home. But to locate and fight them as they raced home, Beatty absolutely required an advance screen, both to give warning and to be ready to repel an attack by enemy destroyers. Warrender already had stripped away Beatty’s destroyers to screen the battleships; now, it appeared to Beatty, Goodenough was taking away his light cruisers to engage an enemy to the south. With Southampton and Birmingham departed, Beatty’s screen was reduced to two ships, Nottingham and Falmouth.

  Suddenly, even these two ships began to leave him. With chagrin and dismay, Beatty watched from the bridge of Lion as his two remaining light cruisers steered across his bow on their way to join Southampton. He did not understand. He believed that Southampton and Birmingham were engaging a single German light cruiser. Had Goodenough signaled him that other enemy light cruisers and destroyers had appeared, Beatty might have realized that his commodore had encountered Hipper’s screen. He might then have assumed that Hipper’s battle cruisers would logically be following this screen, probably close astern. Given this assumption, David Beatty would almost certainly have turned not only his two remaining light cruisers but also his four battle cruisers in Southampton’s direction.

  Beatty, however, could make none of these assumptions because Good-enough had reported only the first German ship, Stralsund. Therefore, at 11:50 a.m., when Beatty saw Falmouth and Nottingham leaving him to join Southampton and Birmingham, the vice admiral considered it a foolish waste of scarce resources. Irritated, he turned to his Flag Lieutenant, Ralph Seymour, and said, “Tell that light cruiser to resume station.” The Flag Lieutenant was uncertain whether “that light cruiser”—now only a shadow in the mist on Lion’s beam—was Nottingham or Birmingham; they were sisters with identical silhouettes. To name the ship wrongly in signaling would cause confusion, so he told the signalman operating the searchlight to address her simply as “light cruiser.” The signal beam was steadied on the cruiser and the signal made: “Light cruiser resume station for lookout duties. Take station ahead five miles.” The signal was aimed directly at Nottingham and intended only for her and for Falmouth. As the name of the light cruiser was not included, however, Nottingham’s captain assumed that the signal was meant for the entire light cruiser squadron and he properly passed it along to Commodore Goodenough. Birmingham, astern of Southampton and already firing at the enemy, also saw Lion’s signal and also passed it along to Goodenough. On receiving it, Goodenough, although in action with the enemy, felt that he must obey. With enormous reluctance, he broke off the battle and turned his ships to return to Lion. As the British light cruisers headed west into heavy seas and the German light cruisers turned south into the mists, Goodenough briefly resighted Stralsund, by herself. He took her to be still another, as yet unreported German cruiser and signaled Beatty: “Enemy’s cruisers bearing south by east.”

  When Beatty received this message, he realized that Southampton was returning to Lion and had abandoned her fight with the enemy. Beatty was astonished. At 12:12 p.m., he brusquely signaled Goodenough, “What have you done with enemy light cruiser?”

  “They disappeared steering south when I received your signal to resume station,” Goodenough replied.

  Beatty was stunned that a British naval officer would break off an action. “Engage the enemy,” he signaled bluntly.

  Goodenough, hapless, answered, “There is no enemy in sight now.”

  Beatty, now enraged, let
Goodenough feel the force of his fury: “When and where was the enemy last seen? When you sight enemy, engage him. Signal to resume previous station was made to Nottingham. I cannot understand why, under any circumstances, you did not pursue enemy.”

  After this sharp public criticism from his superior (Beatty’s signals were visible to other ships of Goodenough’s squadron), Goodenough felt terrible. In the days to come, he was made to feel worse. His excuse that he had obeyed Beatty’s order was never accepted by Beatty, who knew that the idea of calling off Southampton and Birmingham had never entered his head. The only mitigation Goodenough could find was that when he turned away, the German light forces were steering southeast, heading directly into the path of Admiral Warrender’s battleships and armored cruisers. Contact seemed certain.

  Indeed, at 12:15 p.m., Warrender, then fifteen miles southeast of Beatty and steering for the southern edge of the minefield gap, sighted and was seen by the same German light cruisers and destroyers that had just left Good-enough. The Germans, approaching at high speed on an opposite course, saw the British first. When the captain of Stralsund saw Warrender’s giant battleships looming up through the mist, he, with great presence of mind, flashed the recognition signal that Commodore Goodenough had made to him half an hour before. This deception earned him one minute. In the driving rain, Warrender himself, on the bridge of King George V, did not see the German ships. But only a few hundred yards away, Rear Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot in Orion, leading the battle squadron’s 2nd Division, had a clear view. Orion immediately signaled to King George V, “Enemy in sight,” and Orion’s captain, Frederic C. Dreyer, a gunnery expert, ordered his main turrets trained on the leading German light cruiser. Eagerly, then frantically, Dreyer begged Arbuthnot’s permission to open fire. Arbuthnot refused. “No, not until the Vice Admiral [Warrender] signals ‘Open fire,’ ” he said. The order never came. Orion never fired.